Payable On Death: A Jax Rhodes Novel, Book One (The Jax Rhodes Series 1) (19 page)

And then the world went dark.

Hot, dry air
whistled around me, the only sound in the barren wasteland I woke up in. Red dust blanketed everything in a combination of dirt and deterioration. Apart from the layers of rust and crushed brick, the landscape looked familiar. I knelt on the same spot I'd stood mere moments ago and yet I didn't. It looked like Bolton Hill flash forward a century or two to a time without an ozone and never ending drought. Very Mad Max Thunderdome. I much preferred the city the way I'd left it. With a pulse.

The same reddish-brown dust covered my clothes and hair, coating my mouth and making it hard to swallow. Still on my knees, I crawled forward in the direction of the safe zone with my head down to keep the dirt out of my eyes. The brittle ground crunched and broke as I shuffled toward the line, chunks of hardened earth digging into my knees and shins, scratching my palms. My fingertips grazed a familiar pair of expensive men's dress shoes and I collapsed at his feet.

"I'd be lying if I said I never imagined seeing you on your knees before me." The Devil crouched down to whisper in my ear. "Although the details varied just a little from this." His tongue flicked across my ear sending an involuntary shudder through my body, pleasure mixed with pain. "You loved every minute."

"Is this how you see the world? Broken and in ruins?" Desperation and despair settled in my heart, oozed from every pore as the reality of my situation sank in. Somehow, he'd pulled me across without killing me.

I was in Hell. With the Devil.

"Of course not, darling." Grabbing my chin and forcing me to look up at him, he sucked in a breath. "You seek to undo me with that look. It's all there in your eyes. Every delicious ounce of pain, sadness, fear. All your sins."

He stood, pulling me up with him. The world shifted and I swayed, allowing him to pull me against him without resistance to keep from falling over. When the world stopped spinning, I opened my eyes to find the landscape completely changed yet again. My old apartment in Fells. Every mark and dent in the drywall, every little stain on the carpet. Such attention to detail. Right down to the furniture and outdated appliances. The familiarity set my mind at ease, my heart rate returning to normal and my muscles relaxing.

I'd missed this place. The new digs were nice but this place was mine. This place was home.

Dressed in the same workout clothes as the day I lost my bet with Dane, something still under heated debate, I walked around my table and looked out the window at my peeping tom neighbor. He looked up, gave a little wave and then went back to whatever he was doing. The attention to detail was amazing. I've said it before, the Devil is in the details.

"I thought you were going to take a shower."

Dane's voice stopped me cold, chills ran over my body. He couldn't have been brought over. He was well within the safe zone. It had to be a trick. Yet there he was, peeking out of my kitchen with a skillet in one hand and a carton of eggs in another.

"Jax?"

I couldn't speak, couldn't move. Everything suddenly felt so real. I looked down at my bare forearm. No mark of the hunter. Was it possible I'd imagined it all? Thomas, Tobias? Everything that happened from the moment I'd witnessed my mother kill herself in the shelter? If I believed I was in my apartment right now with Dane in my kitchen, I was crazy and suffering from delusions of grandeur. I needed help and powerful antipsychotics.

He set the eggs and pan down and closed the distance between us. Brushing the hair from my face, his fingers lingered, dancing along my jawline until he tipped my chin bringing my lips that much closer to his. His eyes drifted shut as he pressed his lips to mine. My eyes remained wide open as I went through the motion of kissing him, trying to figure out if I'd slipped through some wormhole in time or if I was still in Hell.

My body tried desperately to convince me Dane was real because no illusion could feel so good, while my mind struggled to convince me that it was an elaborate trick by the Devil so I'd give myself over to him. My body was winning. The longer his hands caressed me, the longer he kissed me, the harder it was to see the truth, to remember that I'd left Dane behind when I'd unintentionally crossed the border line and walked right into the Devil's open arms.

He whispered something inaudible, a language I didn't recognize to someone else in the room. Someone who hadn't been there before, who shouldn't have been there at all if I were somewhere other than Hell. That's when the illusion slipped. Just for a moment. Just long enough to see the ripple in the fabric of the artificial world he'd created among the rubble where I'd first crossed through.

It was all I needed to remember the truth.

Unaware I'd escaped his mind trap, he continued his advances. Whatever underling disrupted him had gone and the whispers were all for me. I believed his desire was real; however, the object of that desire was irrelevant to him. He was a creature of need and he was used to those needs being fulfilled. Sweet promises of how he felt for me, what he wanted to do to me. Of course none of them involved using me to unlock the fallen. I knew better.

A gimlet knife had survived the trip to Hell, safely tucked in my back pocket. With the Devil's added weight pressing me against the wall, the handle of the punch dagger reminded me of its presence. Easily concealed, the small t-handle grip and sharp double edged blade that protruded between the index and middle finger made the gimlet an ideal weapon for close combat. The trick was removing it from my pocket without the Devil noticing and before he palmed my ass and discovered it on his own.

Left with little choice or time, I played into his seduction, deepening the kiss. Surprise, followed by satisfaction and heady need, swelled up inside him when he realized I'd become an active participant. With a millennium to practice, the first of the fallen was masterful at arousal, making my job easier and harder at the same time. I pulled my shirt over my head, tossing it aside as my breasts threatened to spill out of my black demi bra. He busied himself with the soft, supple skin while I unzipped my jeans. Things were about to reach a tipping point in this charade of mine. If I didn't free the blade from my back pocket, I was going to end up in bed with the Devil.

Thumbs hooked in the waistband of my jeans, I seductively worked them over my hips, hands sliding around to push them down over my ass, providing the perfect opportunity to pull the small dagger out of my pocket and drive it into the Devil's neck. Everything happened in an instant. The punch dagger pierced through skin and muscle, just missing the carotid artery.

Blood sprayed across my face and chest even as I jumped backward, trying to put some distance between us. Back in his own form, the Devil calmly pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his designer suit and placed pressure on the wound. After a moment, he pulled the bloodied silk away and wiped at the flawless skin on his neck, a stark smear of blood the only evidence I'd wounded him.

"I love foreplay." Darkness swirled in his eyes as he stalked toward me, a beast after its prey.

Gimlet knife firmly in hand, I prepared myself as best I could for a physical attack from the Devil. We'd spent the last five years locked in a battle with me on the receiving end of the psychological warfare and this was the first in all that time we'd come to blows. It could have upset the balance and that could have altered events.

The back of his hand connected with my face hard enough to split my lip and cheek. Blood trickled down my chin and jaw. My legs wobbled but I held my ground waiting for him to come a little closer, close enough to stick him a few times in the ribs. If I was lucky enough, I might land a liver shot. He stepped in with the certainty of any fighter up on the judges' cards. All I had to do was wait for the opening I knew he'd leave as soon as he let his right hand go.

My body shot was a thing of beauty. Mister Joe often bragged about it to the new guys back at BBC. I buried the short blade over and over again, just like when I sparred in the ring. Blood soaked his jacket, but the stain stopped spreading too quickly for any real damage.

The next hit I took was to the solar plexus. Air expelled from my lungs before my knees hit the ground. A blade hand chop to the throat caused excruciating pain and instant swelling of my larynx and vocal chords. I wasn't entirely sure he hadn't crushed my esophagus.

"Some believe asphyxiation heightens the experience. What do you think?" He wiped the solitary tear from my cheek with his index finger, dragging it through some of my blood for good measure before bringing it to his mouth. His tongue snaked around his fingertip, voraciously devouring the small sample. "Ahh, the body and blood." With a feather light touch on my neck, he eased the swelling just enough to allow air to flow back into my lungs.

The punch dagger still in my grasp, I drove it down through the top of his fancy leather shoes straight into the top of his foot. His uninjured foot connected with my ribs, knocking me on my back. If my voice worked, I would have cried out in pain from the coughing fit started by the cloud of dust stirred up when I landed. The Devil was on me in an instant, not giving me a chance to recover.

"We'll be at this all night, Jacqui girl." The pleasure he took in causing me pain was glaringly obvious as he straddled me, the fabric of his tailored pants straining to contain him. "I'm confounded as to why you are making this so hard for yourself. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I enjoy pain as much as the next man, well, probably more so, but the pleasure? It's not often I allow myself such indulgences. Your rejection wounds me, your refusal cuts deeper than that puny blade you carry. And so we journey down a darker path and you shall experience my mastery of the art of torture."

Silently mouthing the banishment prayer was an exercise in futility since we were already in Hell. I mean, where else could I banish him to? Still, it didn't stop me from doing it anyway. Or from scratching the angelic script used to close the portals into the dirt-covered street. Relief flooded me when I saw the smallest twitch once I'd completed the first symbol. I drew another right beside it, a stronger reaction this time. A third and he all but seized on top of me. When I'd drawn the fourth symbol, he fell beside me, his body shaking uncontrollably. I realized a moment later it was from laughter and not some mystical power the script held over him.

Too exhausted and beaten to make a run for it, I rolled onto my stomach, got to my knees and began to crawl away. The Devil wrapped an iron hot hand around my ankle, searing the flesh as he yanked me back down. He jumped on top of me again, this time sitting with all his weight on my ass, grinding my hip bones into the pavement. His hands ran along the span of wings on my back, paying special attention to my shoulder blades.

"Magdalena does remarkable work. Such attention to detail, such realism. She's a true artist. There's just one thing missing. One teeny little detail that would really make them come to life." Cold steel pressed against my skin and I instinctively tried to jerk away. "Hold still. We're finishing a masterpiece."

With the precision of a surgeon, he sliced two deep lines into both sides of my back where each wing appeared to burst through my skin. A small sliver of tissue removed from each incision to ensure scarring.

"There, now it will appear as if they've ripped free from your back. This one's my favorite." He pressed his finger into the seeping wound beneath my Elioud wing. "Feather and leather alike. Feather and leather alike. Joan used to say that over and over again when I visited her each night after your father fell. She still muttering that useless drivel, your mother? Oh, wait, she can't. She's dead."

A strangled sob wrenched itself free despite tremendous effort to keep it lodged inside. The weight and pressure on my lower lumbar eased as he stood. Grabbing a fist full of hair on his way up, he dragged me down the center of the street. Every brutal inch covered my body in road rash. Once the healing process began—
if
it began— the scratches and scrapes would turn into one giant scab. He kept going toward some unknown destination further away from the spot where I'd slipped through.

Behind us, the fabric of time and space splintered with a thunderous crack. Familiar voices I never expected to hear again shouted my name, demanding the Prince of Darkness release me. Tobias escorted Dane across the same boundary I'd accidentally crossed, offering safe passage into Hell to search for me. Something screeched in agony behind them. Hog tied with blessed rosary to bind his hands and feet, Lazarus was apparently in a similar predicament to me. I doubted the Devil cared about the well being or safe return of his minion as much as Dane and even Tobias cared for me.

"Tobias, good of you to come. And you brought a mutual friend. So nice of you to join us, Sin Eater. You still owe me for the last soul you lost me. I intend to collect."

"You play a dangerous game, brother. It's gone on long enough. So close to breaking the rules and the fragile balance they maintain." Thomas stepped out from behind Dane. I hadn't even known he was there until he spoke.

"Tsk, come now, Thomas. Given my history and current position, do think I care about the rules? Look around you, brother. Nobody is playing by them anymore. Not even you. Besides, we're just having a bit of fun." He pretended to check his watch for the time. “She’s only been here five minutes according to the mortal clock. That barely counts as an out of body experience."